A wire harness is an assembly of multiple wires which have been cut to appropriate lengths and equipped with terminals. The harness is bundled to provide a pre-assembled package of wires for incorporation into a device such as a computer, aircraft or other electronic instrument.
Depending on the complexity of the device, the wire harness may have any number of wires. For example, in a fighter aircraft, wire harness containing several hundreds or thousands of wires of different lengths, sizes and terminal configurations may be present.
A wire harness is fabricated manually so that the cost of fabrication increases dramatically with the number and complexity of wires within the harness. Traditionally, the harness was prepared from a wire harness drawing positioned on a work board on which each wire position and path were drawn. The operator would place each wire in position one at a time until the harness was completed.
With increases in harness complexity, the identification, location and placement of each wire on the harness board required some type of operator assistance to hold or reduce the increase in fabrication cost.
Several proposals have been made for wire assistance mechanisms. Lowden, U.S. Pat. No. 2,805,471, discloses the sequential projection of a single complete wire path onto a harness board from a projector having a transparency print of the wire path.
Computer assisted or other programmed light sequencing systems for wire harness fabrication are disclosed in:
Tuller--U.S. Pat. No. 3,705,347 PA1 Frohman et al.--U.S. Pat. No. 3,052,842 PA1 Gray--U.S. Pat. No. 3,163,926 PA1 Hill et al.--U.S. Pat. No. 3,407,480 PA1 Norris--U.S. Pat. No. 3,623,066 PA1 Jasorka et al.--U.S. Pat. No. 3,440,531 PA1 Sweeney et al.--U.S. Pat. No. 3,706,134 PA1 Pellet--U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,319 PA1 Gray--U.S. Pat. No. 3,169,305 PA1 Logan--U.S. Pat. No. 3,693,228
Other types of assistance devices and methods are disclosed in the following prior art:
Notwithstanding the various proposals in the prior art, a need exists for a more flexible system of wire laying assistance.